The Obama administration on Wednesday castigated the Israeli government for approving plans to create a new Jewish settlement on the West Bank, three weeks after it signed a lucrative military aid package with the United States and a week after President Obama traveled to Jerusalem for the funeral of Shimon Peres. In an uncommonly harsh statement, the State Department “strongly condemned” the move . . . –Mark Landler, reporting for the NYT

Last week, when Pres. Obama returned to Washington after Peres, the White House issued a statement that the President had attended funeral in Jerusalem, Israel. Later that day, it issued a correction, striking out the word Israel.

Never mind that the United Kingdom is a democracy. Never mind that free speech and a free press were hard-won over centuries of struggle. The smug bureaucrats at the European Commission against Racism and Intolerance (ECRI) know better. They don’t mean to do so, but they are proving to all Britons that staying in the EU is incompatible with Anglo-American concepts of freedom. Quoting from the ECRI’s drivel:

“In this context, it draws attention to a recent study by Teeside University suggesting that where the media stress the Muslim background of perpetrators of terrorist acts, and devote significant coverage to it, the violent backlash against Muslims is likely to be greater than in cases where the perpetrators’ motivation is downplayed or rejected in favour of alternative explanations.”

Despite the creation of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) in 2014 as an independent regulator for newspapers and magazines, the “ECRI strongly recommends that the authorities find a way to establish an independent press regulator according to the recommendations set out in the Leveson Report. It recommends more rigorous training for journalists to ensure better compliance with ethical standards.”

⇒ This is what speech suppression in the name of “social justice” looks like. It looks like that in the EU. It looks like that on college campuses.

And here, ladies and gentlemen, is the (inadvertently) funniest song ever about weed. It’s from the Lawrence Welk Show (yes!!) in the early 1970s, when everybody but the staff of the Lawrence Welk Show as totally baked. The Welk folks were so unhip they thought “One Toke Over the Line, Sweet Jesus” was a gospel song. And that’s exactly how they played it. It is a hoot.

Here’s old Willie singing the praises of a joint to Merle. (True story: a friend of mine met Willie to do some business a couple of years ago. 8 am. He said that Willie got off his bus, walked into my friend’s office, and was already buzzed.